RE: What difference did Jerusalem make?

... I can t tell the difference between this reasoning and the reasoning that the Civil War really had no effect on the culture of Southern States because it

Message 1 of 105
, Nov 3, 2005

0 Attachment

At 08:41 AM 11/3/2005, John C. Poirier wrote:

>Bob Schacht wrote:
>
> > [The destruction of the Temple] also, as a result, changed the authority
> > structure of Judaism. This was a huge change. The advent of Rabbinic
> > Judaism could not happen until after the destruction of the Temple.
>
>Yes, but it didn't really become *the* form of Judaism until some time after
>the destruction of the Temple. The rabbinic takeover was a slow process,
>and in the early days of their movement they possessed a lot less power than
>they want us to think.

I can't tell the difference between this reasoning and the reasoning that
the Civil War really had no effect on the culture of Southern States
because it took some time for new cultural forms to emerge.

> > Ha! But what do we know of "Christian theology from the start"? Mostly
> > what we know is Pauline theology. But what about Jacobine theology (the
> > theology of James)? His vision of the place of Jerusalem was rather
> > different from Paul's, wasn't it? In the literature that survives, we have
> > only a rather biased sample of Christian theology.
>
>I agree that Palestinian Christianity was not Pauline, but I still don't see
>how the destruction of the Temple would have greatly impacted any form of
>Christianity that we either know about concretely or which scholars have
>reconstructed.
>
> > How do you know that? Would not the removal of James' seat of power had
> > some effect on the Palestinian Christian Community?
>
>I'm not at all sure the Temple was "James' seat of power". Just because his
>theology seemed to have a priestly imprint (which may or may not be related
>to priestly claims of his own), that does not mean that the Temple lent
>James his authority. Despite all that's wrong with Eisenman's
>reconstruction of James's relationship with Qumran, there is still much to
>glean from the similarity between his form of piety and that of the
>Qumranites. If the Qumranites could make a great deal of priestly authority
>without depending at all upon the earthly temple, then why not the early
>Palestinian Christians as well?

Well, here we get to whether "Palestinian Christianity" is a useful
category. Maybe we had "Jerusalem Christianity", "Christianity in the
tradition of John the Baptist," and Galilean Christianity.

Nevertheless, the "Church in Jerusalem" features prominently not only in
Acts, but also in Paul's letters. It seems unlikely to have survived in the
same form after 70 CE.

Bob
Robert M. Schacht, Ph.D.
University of Hawaii
Honolulu, HI

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Richard H. Anderson

Liz, I assume you mean the url for the journal which I posted this am Xtalk member, Lisbeth S. Fried s, new book is now available, The Priest and the Great